


Aftermath; Afore

by Lsusanna



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: "but this isn't really a nice interaction" you say. "have you met these assholes" i reply, Alcohol, Aman (Tolkien), Dialogue Heavy, Gen, I FINALLY WROTE MY LANDFILL SONS; MY TRAINWRECK BOYS, NERDS CW, Siblings, Tirion, Valinor, also called, circa all those places, finwiony drunkenness, i can only get the nerdjerk and the berserkerweirdo to interact nicely when very drunk, i don't recall casting my allegiances with this generation but boyo, i wanted unrelenting angst and i wanted drunk fluff so you get this weird lovechild, or very young, that one time melkor poked the noldor's collective passive agression with a stick, the unrest of the noldor, this fic is so damn short wow, why is fingolfin always the Nice One when did that happen it scalds my eyes, why they gotta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7925278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know you know things. Everyone knows things.”</p><p>Nolofinwë’s laugh is a muffled echo into the demijohn. “But none so many things as you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath; Afore

**Author's Note:**

> Both these conversation bits take place after the freeing of Melkor but before the threaten-your-bro-with-a-sword incident, and the first before the creation of the silmarils. Beta'd by me.
> 
> Feanor=Feanaro  
> Fingolfin=Nolofinwe

“Do you know how the artist made this?” Fëanáro asks, looking up at the ceiling. He is sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him on the floor of the council chamber, long emptied of the assembly’s attendees. A tinted green bottle sits loosely between his hands.

 

“Yes,” Nolofinwë answers irritably. He is beginning to not remember how he got here—he’s fairly certain his own escapade brought him back here, to the cavernous room that wasn’t empty. He knows it was raining, though it isn’t now; he’s still wet. Where his own bottle went is a mystery. They’ve been sharing this one for the better part of—some time.

 

“She was the first to attempt frescos. No one had ever thought to not wait till the plaster was dry— “

 

“Said I knew!” Nolofinwë fancies his echo bounces directly off the damned painting.

 

“Surprised, I didn’t think you had an interest in architecture.”

 

“I dun—I don’t.” Fëanáro makes no objection when Nolofinwë snatches the bottle back. “Turukáno does—I do still _know_ things.”

 

“I know you know things. Everyone knows things.”

 

Nolofinwë’s laugh is a muffled echo into the demijohn. “But none so many things as you.”

 

For a moment Fëanáro looks as if he might reach for their bottle, and Nolofinwë hopes he will, for the pleasure he can’t decide if he would indulge in, of holding it at the full extent of his superior reach. He looks back at the ceiling. “Ostensibly. It’s not strictly fair though—such proximity to the Valar.”

 

“I don’t _believe_ you,” says Nolofinwë.

 

“Why? I didn’t say I was better—”

 

“It’s the _way_ you say—”

 

“How?”

 

“Like _you_.”

 

“You’re…peevish this eve,” Fëanáro declares.

 

“I am not _peevish_!”

 

“He says peevishly, for he is! Fractious. Tetchy. Irascible. _Dyspeptic_ —”

 

“Your—face is dyspeptic!”

 

“ _Eh_?”

 

Nolofinwë makes a noise between his teeth that is equal parts a snarl, a noise of disgust, and a correct means of conveying his point. Their conversation opportunely dies away from there, for the echo of Nolofinwë’s antagonized growl and Fëanáro’s untroubled whine had been steadily growing in volume.

 

It has Fëanáro cringing already; his knees are pulled into arcs, his shoulders about level with his ears. “Mellifluous, ah?” he says as he takes a drink; Nolofinwë had required both hands when pushing himself upright to better express his offense, and so left the bottle unguarded to his brother’s reacquisition. Nolofinwë has the time to grunt a response before Fëanáro’s eyes glaze over. “Mellifluous. Mellifluous. Fluous. Mellifluous. Mellif—do you ever overthink a word so, it starts looking fake? Well, for the given value of ‘fake’ in context—but at least that you become self-aware of its dubious existential quantification?” When Nolofinwë doesn’t answer immediately, or at all, he looks up from the demijohn and says quietly, “I know that you know things—”

 

“You act as if our father has just one son, one child,” Nolofinwë blurts.

 

“What?”

 

“You. Earlier, all afternoon, you pick over the Statute—”

 

“Yes, it’s a prime example of the inefficacy of the Valar—”

 

“I don’t _care_ about the inefficacy of the Valar, that isn’t how it sounds—”

 

“I know you don’t care about the inefficacy of the Valar. No one cares about the inefficacy of the Valar. The inefficacy of the Valar doesn’t exist. Meanwhile their biggest error walks abroad, in and out of our halls as it pleases,” Fëanáro mutters, as Nolofinwë sighs deeply and pries the bottle from his lap.

 

Eventually it registers Fëanáro didn’t launch into a litany, and Nolofinwë looks up with a mouth full of wine to find his brother staring at him, his neck cocked in an aqualine way. “You gave out on a point,” he says.

 

“Only the one where if I’m _tetchy_ so, too, are you.”

 

“False. I am a delight.”

 

Nolofinwe’s laugh swells all the way to the domed ceiling.

 

 

 

 

(Nolofinwë laughs. “And even now you still don’t see you are no longer and only son—no longer, and by your father’s explicit choice.”

 

“You are not worthy of being his son,” Fëanáro muses with that meditative melancholy, casting wide-eyed interest to the studded clasps at the ends of Nolofinwe’s braids with only half-hearted interest in the conversation.

 

“Yes, woe, that my spirit is not burdened with _excess_. Woe, that my presence was not commanding enough to demand it. For shame!” Nolofinwë laughs again into his cup. “You know all your attributes were given you.”

 

“And your noble attributes, Nolvo? Do they crawl from the woodwork to support you on the higher ground, honest and prosaic?”

 

“You defend your honorable origins?”

 

“Yes,” Fëanáro says, and Nolofinwë salutes him with his glass. “And how proud my father is instead, of his rhetorician and his beachcomber.”

 

Nolofinwë settles his elbows more comfortably on the table. “His rhetorician,” he repeats. “And yet what skill is the purview of the politician?”)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Concrit is welcome.


End file.
